Much of survey research is conducted for commercial reasons. For
example, surveys are done to determine market penetration of products and
services; the market shares of brands within a product category; the frequency,
recency and volume of usage; the buyergraphic profile of the users; etc.
The required information has to be obtained from survey respondents through some
survey modes such as door-to-door face-to-face personal interviewing, telephone
interviewing; self-administered mail survey; internet surveys; etc. The
choice of a particular mode is usually determined by the costs and
coverage. For example, it is probably cheaper to conduct interviews by
survey panels, but unfortunately the results may not be representative of the
total population. Sometimes, the choice may even be dictated by the
subject matter. It would probably make no difference if the subject is
radio listening or television viewing. But there are other subjects that
are probably much more difficult in a personal context.

The subject of this article is contraceptive usage. In Argentina, this
is big business with manufacturers from Argentina, Brazil, Japan and the United
States battling each other in the market. Obviously, market intellgence
and user profiles would be helpful in sales and marketing. But the subject
of contraceptive usage is probably difficult to disclose to a perfect stranger
who just knocked on your door and is now asking you about your usage
characteristics and brand preferences. Ditto for telephone intervieiwing
where at least the interview is not looking straight into your eyes.
Internet interviewing would not cover the total universe. So that leaves a
self-administered survey as the only reasonable option.

We will now refer to some survey data from the 2004 Argentina study.
Within this study, there were 2,087 males between the ages of 15 to 75 years old
who were interviewed during the first half of the year 2004 in Argentina.
Of these people, 40% said that they use condoms for contraceptive purposes.

In the chart below, we show the incidences separate by age, socio-economic
level and marital status. As expected, the 20-24 age category is tops for
placing some degree of responsible control on the raging hormones. In
terms of socio-economic level, the incidences fell off in the lower
classes. In terms of marital status, the incidences are highest among the
unattached people.

(Source: TGI Argentina)

So what is it that is responsible for the moral degeneration into
wanton sexual debauchery without responsibility? The next chart shows the
incidence by those who have engaged in a list of leisure activities. None
of this should be surprising, because Voltaire told us a long time ago in Candide
that the path to enlightenment is contained in this maxim:
“Il faut cultiver votre jardin”. Voltaire was referring to
cultural learning by reading literary books as opposed to the literal act of
cultivation a green garden, but both seem to work well for this application.